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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Symposium for Teaching and Learning With Technology at PSU

I’ve been thinking about this blog post since I left the Symposium for Teaching and Learning With Technology at PSU on Saturday afternoon. I am so excited about the community I’m part of at Penn State. Being an adjunct with Penn State Great Valley is very rewarding. I enjoy teaching classes there and have support from the Technology Department, Education Divison, and Library Services. However, I do feel a bit disconnected since I am not on campus everyday. I do a lot on my own to further my own professional development; twitter, blogs, online conferences, etc. I feel that I do have a very strong personal learning network. It still just isn’t the same as connecting with people who also teach at the University level. I’m used to attending conferences focusing on educational technology. Usually, those conferences are directed toward K-12 teachers. I’m always looking for a way to connect with those who teach higher level ed.

The Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology was a gathering of PSU professionals discussing teaching and learning at the University level (just what I’ve been looking for!). Every single presentation that I attended was about effective ways to use technology to enhance the teaching and learning process. More importantly, I feel as though I’ve made new “connections” with professionals at the University level. I added quite a few people to my learning network and noticed that a few others added me to their network. Since Saturday, I have been following them on Twitter and reading their blogs and I’ve already learned so much from them. I also read a very interesting blog post by Kyle Peck, which mirrors my thoughts about the PSU community. He invites us to work together to facilitate meaningful, higher level learning.

Specifically about the symposium, I enjoyed the presentation titled, “Engaging students with program learning outcomes using blogs” and will be implementing a few of the strategies they shared. Specifically, I will be teaching my students how to link the course learning outcomes to their blog tags. This will really help my students stay focused on their learning throughout the course.

I have many other ideas for how I will enhance my courses at PSGV. I will blog about them as I implement them into my teaching. I begin teaching EDTEC448 Using the Internet in the Classroom on May 5 so I’m excited to implement many of the new ideas that I have and also a lot of the strategies I spoke about in my presentation. For now, here is a link to my presentation from the TLT Symposium. It was entitled: University 2.0: Digital Innovations in the University Classroom. In addition, here is a link to the audio of my presentation.

I hope there are more learning opportunities in the near future so that I can continue to grow with these awesome educators! And, to all of those involved with the TLT Symposium, thanks for the opportunity!

(**I just noticed that they posted my video interview. I'm not liking it very much. I have to get better at "thinking on the fly"...it was my first interview in this format. Now that it's over, I have other ideas, things I wish I would have said, things I would have said differently, etc. I'm still learning, too!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Megan,

I'm glad the symposium was such a rewarding experience. You may be interesting in the Learning Design Summer Camp in July.
and the Alan Levine visit in May

N.D. said...

I always think that when I write or say something on the fly, that I should have done so many things differently. I can't do it - I need the prep. Sound like some cool things went on here.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Symposium for Teaching and Learning With Technology at PSU

I’ve been thinking about this blog post since I left the Symposium for Teaching and Learning With Technology at PSU on Saturday afternoon. I am so excited about the community I’m part of at Penn State. Being an adjunct with Penn State Great Valley is very rewarding. I enjoy teaching classes there and have support from the Technology Department, Education Divison, and Library Services. However, I do feel a bit disconnected since I am not on campus everyday. I do a lot on my own to further my own professional development; twitter, blogs, online conferences, etc. I feel that I do have a very strong personal learning network. It still just isn’t the same as connecting with people who also teach at the University level. I’m used to attending conferences focusing on educational technology. Usually, those conferences are directed toward K-12 teachers. I’m always looking for a way to connect with those who teach higher level ed.

The Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology was a gathering of PSU professionals discussing teaching and learning at the University level (just what I’ve been looking for!). Every single presentation that I attended was about effective ways to use technology to enhance the teaching and learning process. More importantly, I feel as though I’ve made new “connections” with professionals at the University level. I added quite a few people to my learning network and noticed that a few others added me to their network. Since Saturday, I have been following them on Twitter and reading their blogs and I’ve already learned so much from them. I also read a very interesting blog post by Kyle Peck, which mirrors my thoughts about the PSU community. He invites us to work together to facilitate meaningful, higher level learning.

Specifically about the symposium, I enjoyed the presentation titled, “Engaging students with program learning outcomes using blogs” and will be implementing a few of the strategies they shared. Specifically, I will be teaching my students how to link the course learning outcomes to their blog tags. This will really help my students stay focused on their learning throughout the course.

I have many other ideas for how I will enhance my courses at PSGV. I will blog about them as I implement them into my teaching. I begin teaching EDTEC448 Using the Internet in the Classroom on May 5 so I’m excited to implement many of the new ideas that I have and also a lot of the strategies I spoke about in my presentation. For now, here is a link to my presentation from the TLT Symposium. It was entitled: University 2.0: Digital Innovations in the University Classroom. In addition, here is a link to the audio of my presentation.

I hope there are more learning opportunities in the near future so that I can continue to grow with these awesome educators! And, to all of those involved with the TLT Symposium, thanks for the opportunity!

(**I just noticed that they posted my video interview. I'm not liking it very much. I have to get better at "thinking on the fly"...it was my first interview in this format. Now that it's over, I have other ideas, things I wish I would have said, things I would have said differently, etc. I'm still learning, too!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Megan,

I'm glad the symposium was such a rewarding experience. You may be interesting in the Learning Design Summer Camp in July.
and the Alan Levine visit in May

N.D. said...

I always think that when I write or say something on the fly, that I should have done so many things differently. I can't do it - I need the prep. Sound like some cool things went on here.